by Julia Pascal

Jerusalem at the height of the last intifada. A wife wants to celebrate her 30th birthday. A husband does not want to have a son. A businesswoman wants to sell an apartment block. A daughter wants to shock her mother. A brother wants to kill soldiers. A soldier wants to stop soldiering. Israeli Jews, Arabs and Palestians all meet on one day as bombs explode.

Sex and violence in Stockholm, Tel Aviv and Paris. Political murder in suburban London. Death, love and homicide in New York. War in the belly of a whale. These are the themes in Julia Pascal’s latest collection which takes place in Europe in 1982, in London in 1946 and in a whale at any time.

An exploration of a secret history that happened in London just after the end of the war. Why was there a plot to assassinate Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary by right-wing Jewish activists? When does loyalty to nation state conflict with loyalty to nation?

Nineveh, a new play by Julia Pascal and directed by Ailin Conant opens at Riverside Studios, April 16-May 11 2013

Presented by Theatre Témoin.

Once there was a boy. The war had taken his hands and arms. When he went home, his family didn’t recognise him. “You have no arms”, they said, “you are not our son”. They threw him into the river, where a giant fish swallowed him…

Three former soldiers are trapped in a whale. When a boy from another war zone arrives, they are forced to deal with their own pasts.

Inspired by true stories told by child soldiers and ex-combatants from across the world; collected by Ailin Conant during a year of creative work in Kashmir, Israel, Lebanon, and Rwanda.